Elevate Ep 43: Scaling Through Packaging with Nick Novy, Founder & CEO of Korpack

**Jason Ulm** (0:13)
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Hey everybody, Jason Ulm here with another episode of the Elevate Powered by Braden Podcast. And as you can tell from behind me, we're not in the studio at Fisher's, we're on location. I'm with a new friend up here in the Chicago area, but Nick, welcome to the show. And where are we?

**Nick Novy** (0:59)
Thank you. So we're in Bloomingdale, Illinois, which is our headquarters here in the US.

**Jason Ulm** (1:05)
Awesome. Bloomingdale. And Nick, which company are you with?

**Nick Novy** (1:08)
CorePack.

**Jason Ulm** (1:09)
CorePack. Excited to hear about that journey. I know you're the founder and CEO, correct, right? So it's great to hear the story of how CorePack got started. But that's where you are today. Let's go back to your genesis. Where are you from originally?

**Nick Novy** (1:23)
Actually, I grew up in Bloomingdale.

**Jason Ulm** (1:26)
This is hometown? Yes. I don't think I remember that for the first time.
So not too far from up here. High school here in town as well? Okay. So which high school?

**Nick Novy** (1:35)
Lake Park.

**Jason Ulm** (1:36)
Lake Park. All right. So during your high school days, what was a young Nick doing?

**Nick Novy** (1:42)
Probably things I shouldn't have been doing.

**Jason Ulm** (1:45)
Yeah. But doing schoolwork, sports activities, any of that kind of stuff?

**Nick Novy** (1:49)
Yeah. I played football when I was freshman, sophomore and then wanted to work. Okay.
I actually worked at Best Buy down the street for a couple of years. Probably what got me into tech.

**Jason Ulm** (2:00)
No kidding. So it was on Geek Squad or just out on the floor?

**Nick Novy** (2:03)
Just in the audio video department. Okay.

**Jason Ulm** (2:08)
Gotcha.
Okay, gotcha. As long as you weren't stealing them, you were installing them. That was probably okay.

**Nick Novy** (2:14)
Right. All right.

**Jason Ulm** (2:14)
That's good. So on the right track there, so as you're finishing up high school and you're thinking about what's going to come next, you're working in high school, where do you go? Are you going to go to school? Are you going to go to work? What happens next?

**Nick Novy** (2:26)
I know I wanted to go to school. I didn't really know what I wanted to do in high school. But I was leaning towards the math and science side. My stepfather was a big influence on me and he was an industrial engineer.
I thought about mechanical engineering.
A lot of my best friends did not go to school. One of them was an electrician. Three of them went into the Marine Corps. Just different places. Sure. I wanted to go to college. I didn't really know where. I was potentially going to go to Northern Illinois. But then I visited Michigan State and I just fell in love with it.

**Jason Ulm** (3:13)
So Northern Illinois is a choice. Michigan State, great school by the way. But what was the draw to Michigan State?

**Nick Novy** (3:22)
I love the larger atmosphere, the sports, football, basketball. It's exciting to see your team on TV all the time. Sure.

**Jason Ulm** (3:33)
It's a lot of fun there. So Michigan State, what were you studying there?

**Nick Novy** (3:37)
So I went in as undeclared.
I think the plan was to be a mechanical engineer. And then I went to an intro to engineering course, to expose me to electrical and civil and mechanical. And they actually kind of dissuade me to not want to be an engineer a little bit.

**Jason Ulm** (4:06)
So help me understand that part. So the idea was you come in, we're gonna give you an intro overview of all these different areas.
It wasn't that you saw this and said, I don't think this is for me. They were maybe talking to you like, maybe this isn't for you.

**Nick Novy** (4:21)
They were just speaking about just the intricacies and the nuances and the detail and sitting in front of a computer all day and designing something that's really small, at least on the electrical and maybe mechanical side. I just thought it was just too much computer work, too much calculus, just didn't excite me that much.